Even though Netflix adds new tittles to its platform throughout each month, subscribers have probably sat in front of their screens for what seemed like an eternity as they browsed through the catalog to find something to watch. But there's actually a real reason why it might seem harder to find a title after streaming Daredevil, Flaked or House of Cards.
Netflix's catalog for U.S. subscribers has fewer titles now than it did in 2014. According to the Netflix tracking site AllFlicks, the video streaming service's catalog has decreased by a third since 2014.
The site's data reveals that back in January 2014, the Internet-based streaming platform provided its users with 8,103 titles that consisted of 6,494 movies and 1,609 TV series. As of March 23, Netflix currently offers only 5,532 titles — 4,335 movies and 1,197 series.
Do the math and you will quickly learn that Netflix has seen a significant reduction in the amount of titles available to stream, 2,571 fewer titles, or 31.7 percent, to be exact.
And this news comes despite the fact that Ted Sarandos, Netflix's head of content, revealed at the beginning of this year that the company will release 600 hours of original content in 2016.
That original content could have something to do with the reason why the platform is offering fewer titles. As it becomes more expensive to gain streaming rights other competing services may also want, it makes more sense to instead invest the money into its own exclusive programming.
Netflix said it will double its amount of original series from last year to now feature 31 options in 2016. It also will continue to increase the amount of original movies released after making a few acquisitions at Sundance. These titles include Brad Pitt's War Machine, Ricky Gervais' Special Correspondents and a cop thriller called Bright starring Will Smith, which it reportedly purchased for $90 million.
With that much money spent on a single title, no wonder Netflix has needed to scale back a bit. And even its original content costs money, so no wonder it needs to be more conservative. Quality over quantity, right?
According to the statistics, there are now 33.2 percent fewer movie titles compared with a 25.6 percent decrease in TV shows. The numbers are close enough to make us believe that the company isn't skimping back on one type of programming significantly more than the other.
Source: AllFlicks
